“I hope that we will succeed in moving quickly” and finalizing the government “in a few days,” said François Bayrou in the middle of the afternoon. At the end of the morning the objective, according to Marc Fesneau, the head of the MoDem deputies, was to evoke a “start-up architecture”.
Criticism of his absence in Mayotte
His intention is to present a tight team of around 25 ministers with personalities from the left, center and right, according to parliamentary sources, before delivering his general policy declaration to Parliament on January 14.
In the meantime, he answered questions from the National Assembly for the first time. And he was questioned about his choice to go, the day before, to chair the municipal council of his city of Pau, of which he intends to remain mayor, and to only attend by videoconference a crisis meeting in Mayotte, devastated by the passage of Cyclone Chido.
“You should not have gone to Pau to retain a mandate, but to the crisis meeting at the Élysée to assume your new role,” launched the head of the La France insoumise deputies, Mathilde Panot, when her socialist counterpart , Boris Vallaud, criticized him for having also taken advantage of it to promote “cumulative mandates”.
In the morning, the President of the Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, even said that she would have “preferred that the Prime Minister, instead of taking a plane to Pau, took the plane to Mamoudzou”, the capital from Mayotte.
“In my place as a citizen”
Emmanuel Macron, whose relations with François Bayrou were strained when he was appointed to Matignon, announced that he would be in the archipelago “on Thursday”, according to the Elysée. François Bayrou justified himself by invoking the need not to “separate the province and the circle of powers in Paris”, one of his hobby horses. “Pau is in France (…) I was also in my place as a citizen,” he pleaded.
He also said he shared the seriousness of the national representation on the tragedy of Mayotte, deploring in passing that there had not been a “development model” adopted for the archipelago “much earlier”.
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“Will you be open to compromise?”
Beyond that, the new tenant of Matignon was bombarded with questions about how he intends to climb this “Himalaya” of challenges that he mentioned when he took office on Friday. For the National Rally, Laure Lavalette drew up a list of priorities, notably asking for the vote on an “agricultural emergency law” before the end of the year.
The socialist Boris Vallaud sent him a “solemn republican warning”, demanding answers on the budget, pensions, purchasing power and even public services. “Will you be open to compromise?” he asked.
“He still looks a little lost” when he “said” Pau is France, it’s not Paris “,” judged Cyrielle Chatelain for Les Ecologistes. “He seemed to discover that Mayotte was a French territory,” added his colleague Sandrine Rousseau.
Necessary savings on the program
François Bayrou, proclaiming his “respect” for all deputies whatever their political camp, refused to detail his solutions. “I will not hide anything, I will leave nothing untreated and unanswered,” he limited himself to responding.
Likewise, he pledged not to leave “the budgetary situation unanswered”, while the adoption of a finance law for 2025 has been dormant since the censure of his predecessor Michel Barnier. “I never believed that the answer to all the country’s problems was found in taxation,” he only clarified, referring to necessary “savings”, but without quantifying his intentions.
At the same time, consultations with political forces, which began on Monday, continued in Matignon.
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A project still “too vague”
The leaders of the Ecologists estimated that François Bayrou was already “little by little paving the way for his own censorship”. As for Laurent Wauquiez, the leader of the Les Républicains deputies, received on Monday, he requested a new meeting on Tuesday with the head of government, whose project is still “too vague” in his eyes.
The leader of the Liot deputies Stéphane Lenormand said he had a “cordial, lively” exchange which will call for other talks. At the end of their interview, described as “frank”, the communists reported not having received a response from François Bayrou to their request for a vote of confidence following his general policy declaration. They will decide to censor him based on “the content” of his speech.
